China’s Flying Drone Carrier - Missile Sponge?

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The Chinese show off the "Jetank" drone swarm carrier.

What do you think? Great idea, Elon is right, manned airborne fighting is done? Terrible idea, sacrificing drones is a hate crime against drones!? T-1000 approves? Leave your comments below!

Every Monday at 8PM ET, Mover (F-16, F/A-18, T-38, 737, helicopter pilot, author, cop, and wanna be race car driver) and Gonky (F/A-18, T-38, A320, dirt bike racer, author, and awesome dad) discuss everything from aviation to racing to life and anything in between.



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*The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.*
*Views presented are my own and do not represent the views of DoD or its Components.*

[djinn]

The scary part is not the drone carrier itself, it's the fact that they're starting to come up with these advances way before us.

[chopinmack]

Admiral Samuel Paparo made an “Unmanned Hellscape” proposal recently .
China is making prototypes to see if these can be sold to the US Army for the “Unmanned Hellscape” project .

[TaiwanSausage]

5 months ago, PACOM head Paparo said that US planned to give PLA a "Hellscape" in West Pacific theater in the future.

last month, Paparo changed his tone about US Hellscape strategy against PLA.

I suppose Paparo also watched videos about 100 types of chinese military robots & drone platforms in "airshow china". after watching videos, Paparo must thought holy fuck its my soldiers will burn in hell....LOL...😅😅😅

[mahairman]

Mover is the only one with real experience in fighting drone carriers because he's watched Ace Combat.

[TuanTran-hf]

You want to see drones? You think you have seen drones in Ukrn. You haven't see nothing yet on a overcapacity scale. Lol

[petnahc]

Gonky just figured out how to defeat stealth fighters. A 4 gen fighter carries enough drones to neutralize the F35 missiles. Then it gets in close for a merge then there goes the F35 in a ball of flames.

[robertwang]

It’s simple math, if China spends US1B on weapons, the US will probably need to spend US10B or more, that’s the jarring difference in this arms race. The other factor is China is the top industrial power bigger than the next 9 combined. Its manufacturing capability is probably 50X that of the US. So the rate they can replenish their weapons is overwhelming superior. And if their normal peace time factories are turned into war effort, you will be looking at tens of thousands more factories. I don’t see how the US can maintain superiority.

[ilookatnews]

How much did it cost for that raptor to shoot down the weather balloon?

[dyong]

You can see on their faces these old fighter jocks are in utter shock. There is no countering this as China's industrial output trounces the amerikans. Today amerika is like Japan in 1942 while China is like Amerika in the same period. China's industrial might and innovation means China can out produce and out innovate the yankees in any prolonged war.

[donaldlee]

Modern warfare is getting more and more cyberpunk

[major__kong]

Drones or manned aircraft carrying drones have some interesting capabilities. Eyes under the weather, eyes at a standoff, get more eyes out there. Lots of cool stuff going on behind the scenes.

[ah]

China is more likely to send drones to perform Christmas show than attacking anybody. They just did a 10k+ drone show back in October.

[stanhry]

Just wait drone carrier carrying drone that also will carry drones on them.

[luihinwai]

The drone carrier can just realize all its drones as soon as it detects a missile is coming at its way

[theviking]

you forgot one important thing, carrier drone are more expensive than an Aim-120, a lot more expensive

[jfwong]

hahahhahaha .... all these sour grapes and bad apples

[DCLXVI]

One thing you all need to learn is you can never ever outwork the Chinese..they have a different type of ethics

[mattfgln]

Lasers and ecm. I think a missile will always be more expensive than a drone

[Philistine]

Anybody who wants to use drones as "missile sponges" has to make the drones at least look like a real threat worthy of engaging with a missile - otherwise the drones just get ignored. That means each drone needs a certain minimum level of capability, which translates to size and expense, which means fielding fewer of them. Not to the point that it's not a threat, but it's fundamentally the same as any other kind of decoy.

[aphidian]

These are not high speed drones (both the carrier and what it carries), therefore they won't do well in AA combat against jets. I think the system is designed towards air to ground warfare, and it is also a modular design with other modules such as disaster survey, cell tower etc., not just for carrying drones.

An AA drone carrier would require a larger platform, at least H-6 sized if not more, because jet powered drones that can match the altitude and speed of jet fighters + operate for considerate time would definitely be larger (otherwise it'd just be an AA missile), but they still have to be expendable as it'd be hard to return to a carrier mid air. I'm not sure if this is practical or cost effective compared to larger UAVs that just take off with fighters and doesn't need to be carried.